Surrounded by the elders of his community, a young Chasidic boy waits to hear an address by Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

grants every Jew the right to immediate
and automatic citizenship upon entering
Israel. As currently written, a Jew is de-
fined as someone born of a Jewish mother
or someone converted to Judaism. The
type of conversion is left unspecified.
Under the amendment, the legislation
would be changed to specify someone
"converted in accordance with Halach-
ah," traditional Jewish law. A Halachic
conversion requires a commitment to ob-
serve traditional mitzvot as well as im-
mersion in the ritual bath or mikvah and,
in the case of men, circumcision.
In the Israeli elections, after a split
within the Agudat Israel party over Lu-
bavitch, Rabbi Schneerson agreed to
throw his weight behind the remaining
Agudat group, which became a standard
bearer for Who Is A Jew. One piece of the
party's literature showed a color portrait
of Rabbi Schneerson and, on the back, an
offer to sign the card and send it to the
Rebbe in request of his blessing.

,

Agudat Israel and other religious par-
ties made a strong showing in the parlia-
mentary elections, increasing their repre-
sentation by 50 percent. As negotiations
proceeded to form a new government be-
tween the major parties, Likud and La-
bor, the religious parties offered • their
support for a price: passage of the Who Is
A Jew amendment.
American Jewry revolted, in what one
national Conservative leader, Rabbi
Wolfe Kelman of the Rabbinical Assem-
bly, called a "Jewish intifada," a sponta-
neous uprising against the demands of
the right wing. Conservative and Reform
leaders said that the passage of the a-
mendment would, in effect, delegitimize
them as religious practitioners and fought for
its defeat. They were joined in their efforts
by Jewish communal leaders worried that
passage would create a schism between
Israel and the Diaspora.
As the lobbying against Who Is A Jew
heated up, some of the other religious

RNS Photo de World

parties dropped the issue, settling in-
stead for more money for their religious
institutions or other concessions. But
Lubavitch fought for passage of the a-
mendment until the end. The end came
when the two major parties did what they
said they did not want to do — forge yet
another coalition government, thereby
rendering Lubavitch all but impotent to
attain its goal.
The entanglement of Lubavitch in the
Who Is A Jew controversy and its dex-
terity in disentanglement provide a good
opportunity to look at the ways and
means that Lubavitch operates.

Worldwide Scope

By most accounts, Lubavitch is the
largest of the Chasidic groups that sur-
vived the destruction of European Jewry.
Although they are loath to release popu-
lation figures, interpretation of census

"When we
get to Mars,
nobody will
be surprised
when we see
a Chabad
House
there," noted
one observer.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

29